Bill Clinton: Blame me, not Obama

9/12/12 7:26 PM EDT

ORLANDO, Fla. – President Bill Clinton said to blame him for the economy, if you want, but absolve President Obama from any fault.

Speaking to 2,000 people in a crowded and loud hotel ballroom here on the second night of his Florida campaign swing, the 42nd president once again delivered an entirely off-the-cuff speech in praise of Democratic politics in general with a nod to President Obama’s re-election.

He reprised the general themes of his well-received speech at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., emphasizing the idea that the nation’s economy was in such turmoil that no one could have fixed it in a single four-year term.

“First I want to say again something I said in Charlotte, because the whole election could come down to this,” he said. “I honestly believe it doesn’t matter who caused it or whether the contributing factors all happened under President Bush or something I did or something Ronald Reagan did 30 years ago. Regardless, President Obama didn’t cause it.”

Clinton’s don’t-look-back theme comes in stark contrast to the Obama campaign stump speech that largely serves as a warning not to return to George W. Bush-era economic policies that he maintains caused the economic mess he has spent the last four years fixing. Clinton will make campaign and fundraising appearances for Obama in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, New York and California during the next six weeks.

Clinton continued.

“And if he’d kept telling us that and not done anything, we’d still have to replace him,” he said of Obama. “You don’t get to pick the good and not the bad. So he took it on. Now what I want to say again and again and again, it is my opinion, as someone who, beginning when I was governor in 1979, has spent a lifetime trying to create jobs and help people start businesses and expand manufacturing and create opportunity for people to train and educate them to seize those opportunities, it is my opinion that no president, not Barack Obama, not Bill Clinton not anybody who served before us, nobody who ever had this job could repair that much damage to this economy.”

In his 34 minute-speech, Clinton, as he did Tuesday night in Miami, delivered a strong defense of Obama’s student loan and health care policy. He touted the Democrats for having “a responsible debt plan” and urged people to choose “cooperation over conflict and arithmetic over illusion.” He did not address the attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts in Libya and Cairo.

And Clinton mocked Republicans who maintain they are seeking to return to the Constitution’s original intent. In what served as his big finish, Clinton wrapped a call for a re-electing Obama with a shot at the tea party.

“All these people talk about the intent of the founding fathers, when the Constitution was ratified only guys like me could vote. White, male property owners,” he said. “That was it. But we can grow and we have grown and we will grow again. But you need to re-elect President Barack Obama.”

With that, the Springsteen music kicked on and the former president left the stage.